This is one of those small annoyances, to me atleast. You know like the fly that keeps tickling your arm when you're lazily dosing in your back yard on a summer's day.

Many times I see posts referring to this "distro" or that "distro" and it bothers me because the set of scripts released by "The POL Developers" with (almost) each version of POL is the Distro. I had wanted to post this a long time ago and had forgotten to but tonight I was reading another website that referred to someone's "distro" and it wasn't The Distro so it came to mind again. Yeah I know it's a minor thing and yeah I know it probably won't make a raindrop in hell's difference in 50 years but it can get confusing if every scriptbase is called distro.

I am sure most of you wish it had stayed buried in my memory but well, I haven't ranted lately so it was my time to complain. Maybe next time I'll post about more trivial matters such as religion, politics or the coming ice age.
*grins*

What I want to say is that what you just said (what I understood of it) is just prejudice.

Any script set that makes POL usable is a disrto. Small (BASIC DISTRO) or Big (OFFICIAL DISTRO). Made by POL devs (OFFICIAL DISTRO) or not (ZH, and the one I'm writing ).

So, first thing to consider is that, what makes POL usable for you may differ to what someone else thinks which makes POL usable.

There are some people that just want PVP, they do not write AI, nothing, just make some stones where you can click and get itens and an "arena", done. Well, that is not usable for me, for them it is. It's a distro.

I've seen a RPG shard where they said "we want player interactions, we're not going to put any NPC here". Hehe, it's their ditro, for me it's a crap.

Even basic distro, you may want to play POL for different reasons, so basic distro may turn out usable for some.

There are some people downloading POL, UOX, Sphere, RunUO, just to see how the world is without being connected (I've done that in the past, had some friends who have done that too).

So, any script set can be a distro, it just needs to make POL usable in one sense. It's a religion discussion here, becase it depends on points of view. For me that pvp shard is not usable, for them it is.

So, unless you want something annoying your head, stop thinking of it. Because it IS a point of view stuff.

This is precisely why game engines have distribution code. POL remains POL, no matter what scriptbase you use. If you're using a ZH scriptbase, that's fine, you're still using the POL engine. If you're using a totally custom scriptbase that's also all good. However, you cannot call the latter two "distros", they simply are not, no matter how you try and rationalise it.

Distribution code is specifically written for POL by POL developers and as such is guaranteed to run on POL. You cannot summarily say "this is also distro even though it's not written by the Developers of POL". Distro specifically points to the codebase written by the Developers for their own Engine.

This is one of the first distros that a core developer has directly done (me).
Prior to that it was a team of volunteer scripters.

If someone says "How do I do x" and it is done in the distro, wouldn't it make sense to refer someone to that portion of it? I could say "Refer to Yukiko's shard" ...but... the scripts aren't available.

Here is another point
The website was done by pol developers, as was the distro - wouldn't it make sense to refer people to its web page status script for monitoring on the shards page? It isnt saying "you must use this script" its conveying the logic that our website is looking for to correctly interface.

Another reason people get referred to it a lot
When core features come out - people need an example on their usage and adaptations.
Well, the pol developers provide that service, too. Sure the repsys hook has an issue with .criminal() and .murderer() methods being used - but I am sure it helped at least a couple people make their own.

Axel and I are working on the distro right now with an aim towards making it a very loose setup.
Most things being config driven for adjustments, parent systems that control child scripts to increase cross-shard computability. In this idea - primarily with the brain AI, its more easy for newer people who pick up the distro and start a new shard, to later on share nerve scripts.

A friend of mine, an oldtimer UO player, a month or two ago told me he wanted to start up a small POL shard, just for the fun of running it. He downloaded the latest core and distro. He compiled up all the scripts and then launched up the server. Upon entering it he started exploring. World was almost blank. The few npcs present in the scripts had no loot. Half of the skills were not present. He abandoned the idea almost a week later, when he saw how much difficult was to convert scripts from previous POL versions to 097.

Austin wrote:Most things being config driven for adjustments, parent systems that control child scripts to increase cross-shard computability. In this idea - primarily with the brain AI, its more easy for newer people who pick up the distro and start a new shard, to later on share nerve scripts.

I think that the community really needs an up-to-date, "quickstart" package.
Just like: Hey, click here to download "POL-All-In-Here", then just double click and it's ready to go!

I'm sure that most of us, customizing the scripts for our own shards, won't be able to contribute to the distro, because every shard is different. Maybe, let's say, 3 over 10 would contribute. Ok. But if it's easier to start and learn ( a clear documentation, tutorials and such things will be really important when the distro is almost complete ), then we will be not 10, but 100. And then 30 would contribute.

Distribution code is specifically written for POL by POL developers and as such is guaranteed to run on POL. You cannot summarily say "this is also distro even though it's not written by the Developers of POL". Distro specifically points to the codebase written by the Developers for their own Engine.

That is entirelly wrong IMO, I don't know if there is a standard for that, but a distribution of something is just SOMETHING + a bunch of addons to improve (depending on the point of view, to worse) it.

When I was refering to the usable thing, I was just wanting to give a nice name for those addons .

Of course, when it comes to POL Distro, it's obivous that people are refering to the official distro, if they don't specify. But that is just a habit (a good one IMO).

There is a HUGE use of the "distribution" word when it comes to linux. Linux is just a kernel of an "unix-like" Operating System, you have a programming interface (syscalls) and a lot of stuff, like memory manager, but that alone is not much usable for most people. So people build Linux Distributions, which adds lots of addons to the linux, in order to make it usable.

You can make an analogy here, POL would be linux and the rest of eScript scripts would be the software set that allows users to use the computer.

The union of POL plus eScript scripts would build a POL Distribution. The union of LINUX plus software that linux can run would build a Linux Distribution.

It just doesn't make much sense saying "In the POL world 'Distribution' will mean something differente from the rest of the world.", so I keep defending this point of view.

You seem to be using the word "Distro" to mean "package." You can release a bunch of scripts, but that's all it is... a scriptbase, a package of scripts. Just because something is "distributed" it doesn't mean it is a "Distro." "Distro" is the collection of scripts that is provided by the POL Team for each POL-Core platform. "Distro" is a specific scriptbase. ZH is a specific scriptbase.

First, I apologize to Austin's and Luth's initial responses but I didn't follow how they related to my original post. I'll assume it was me that missed something and not them.

Here was my basic point and Phao sort of addressed it and provided the answer in his latest response
Phao said "Of course, when it comes to POL Distro, it's obivous that people are refering to the official distro"

That is that Distro or POL Distro should refer to the official POL scriptbase release that you download from here. Note the capital 'D'. I suppose I am a bit nit-picky about these things but it is because I am so appreciative of the POL Team and don't want their efforts watered down by other scriptsets becoming known as "Distros" whether it was a solo effort as the current release basically is or a POL user team effort as past Distros were.

I am not opposed to the Zulu Hotel set of scripts being known as the Zulu Hotel distro. That is perfectly acceptable. As for the various Linux releases they are known as the Ubuntu distibution or the Backtrack distribution. If there were an official (and there might be for all I know) Linux headquarters their release, IMO, would be the Linux Distribution.

Luth wrote:You seem to be using the word "Distro" to mean "package." You can release a bunch of scripts, but that's all it is... a scriptbase, a package of scripts. Just because something is "distributed" it doesn't mean it is a "Distro." "Distro" is the collection of scripts that is provided by the POL Team for each POL-Core platform. "Distro" is a specific scriptbase. ZH is a specific scriptbase.

Its just a matter of definition.

It doesn't make any sense saying that.

Distro is just an abbreviation to Distribution. It doesn't make any sense modifying its meaning just because we're in the POL world.

I know this topic has been dead for a while, but I remember back around 2002, maybe earlier, when the "Distro" team pulled togeather, if memory serves me well, the public release distros were more commonly known as the "Official Distro .92" or whatever, as at that time, the contributers were so great in number, ever a test distro was in the works, known as the "Test Distro .92".

So to those who knew Eric well, and the scripters, you kinda had...
Beta Core .9#a (.91a, .91b, etc)
Official Core .92 (Always in this format)
Test Distro .93
Official Distro .94

Now that's just if memory serves me well, and it doesn't always.

Just food for thought...

Yesterday is history,tomorrow is a mystery,today is a gift ... that is why it is called ... present.

Damien you bring up another good point in your post. The numeric designation is less than 1, ie. POL 0.92 or as in the current release POL 0.98. Somehow the decimal point git dropped some time back. I think this fact was addressed in some other thread a while back. I'm very excited that we are two whole hundredths (pun intended) from being at version ONE!